Travels of THB: Day 6: Bangkok to Paro, Bhutan

Day 6: Bangkok to Paro, Bhutan

THB supports his team even when they play in Japan, he's in Bhutan, and their home base is Oak-town

It's 2:31am and we're on our way to the airport on the other side of the lobby; we need a shuttle!!

Weather: Steamy at 2am in Bangkok (in the 4 minutes we’re outside), low 40s in Paro at 7am, warming up to low 60s mid-day

Quote of the Day: What time is it?

Department of Lyrics: Here’s the quote THB was trying to recall, from Famous Blue Raincoat by Leonard Cohen:

It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better

It was 4am when I sent out the post yesterday {Ed note: THB has no clue what time this post will go out, or even when he wrote it.}. It was 2:30am when we checked out of the Novotel. It was 5am when we took off from Bangkok for our 3 hour flight to Paro. It was 7am when we landed, we gained another hour. It is hopeless to figure out what time our bodies (or brains) thought it was. It is hopeless to figure out if we had jet lag or sleep disorientation or sleep deprivation or exhaustion from walking and climbing at 7K feet, or some combination of all these. Maybe this is the new normal for THB.

In Bangkok, they use buses to get you to/from your flights (or at least they did for our two). Going to board they load the biz class into fancy shuttles, not cattle cars; that's a 2 week old he's holding

Breakfast for THB: Indian veg

Inside the Paro airport

It’s now 3:30 in the afternoon in Paro (my netbook time says it is 2:35am in E-ville) when I am starting this post, and we’re exhausted. Our flight into Paro is noteworthy in that the plane does a few zigs and zags to avoid the mountains and then a sharp u-turn to line up for landing. We knew it was coming and thankful there was good visibility.

Tashi

Chencho

Tashi, our guide for Bhutan, and Chencho, our driver, meet us at the airport. Tashi will be with us throughout our Bhutan travels, you have to travel with a guide in Bhutan. He’s a cheerful guy, very open, and blends in the current customs with the history of the country.

Chencho (sounds like Tay-Joe to THB) is our driver for all but one day (tomorrow); he will be moving the car while we take an internal flight (2 days from now) of 25-30 minutes (all to be explained in future posts…where the future happens).

Off to the Uma Paro Hotel (lovely), up above the town, where we find out our room isn’t ready yet. It’s festival week so all the hotels around here are booked, Of course, it’s also not even 8am yet so most likely the cleaning crew isn’t even at work yet (or they’d be waking up the guests).

Great view through the trees

You can't drink the water straight from the sink

Yoga...this is as close as THB will get to a class

Hopefully tomorrow

Right hand drive. There will be a decided strategy on which of us gets to sit behind the driver on the narrow winding roads to come

We dawdle a bit, have a cup of tea (yet another weird and interesting tea), get a tour of the hotel, where THB gets to see the yoga room. Yoga every day from 5 to 6 pm…THB doesn’t say anything and neither does DB. We know THB is not doing yoga in a room with mirrors on 3 walls (or is it 2 walls…whatever, THB is not doing yoga).

Entrance to National Museum

View down to Paro Town

The museum used to be in the Watchtower - it was damaged in an earthquake in 2011 and is nearing re-opening

Current home of the museum, across the street and slightly above the Watchtower

View of the fortress from above

Good luck flags outside the restored Museum

Tourists pay a lot more...$3 vs 16 cents for locals

Tashi asks if we are flexible and accommodating: DAMN RIGHT (THB’s middle names are Flexible and Accommodating. BTW, that’s not the type of flexible where you can touch the floor with your palms without bending your knees…THB is another type of flexible). So we move up our tour of the National Museum from tomorrow to this morning.

No pics allowed in the museum. The museum at one time was in the Watchtower overlooking the Dzhong (fortress) guarding the valley; the Watchtower was damage in earthquake in 2011 and is almost ready to be used again. In the meantime, the exhibits are in the administration building.

There’s a room full of masks (some of which we might see being worn at the Festival later today). There’s a special exhibition of photographs from 50 years ago when Indian dignitaries like Nehru and Indira Ghandi met with the King and future King of Bhutan, and also a room of stuffed animals of Bhutan. Plenty of time to get to know Tashi.

One of our questions (while looking at an attribution): what is the story behind names in Bhutan? It is pretty fluid, as for centuries the parents did not name the babies, that was done by religious dignitaries and sometimes “first” names came second and vice versa. There was no such thing as family names nor was a name specific to a gender. That’s now changing and the parents are appending a family name.

We decide to walk through the pop-up carnival outside of town: it is mostly gambling games using rudimentary spin the wheel techniques.

There are many booths similar to this one and not near as nice

Bumper cars on water

World's smallest (real arrows) archery booth; two guys are taking turns seeing who is best at 5 meters

Bullseye!

Time to keep walking on into town and an early lunch. THB thinks it was 11am when we got to the restaurant.

It is (of course) a series of local dishes, some of which are very good and all at least decent. Another aside: even though Bhutan is a Buddhist country they still eat (some) meat. Except for two months a year when imports are banned.

Hot water, lime and honey

The last two kings: King #4 abdicated so #5 could take over. Monarchy started in the early 1900s when the Bhutanese got tired of all the infighting between districts. 100 years later the monarchy yielded power to an elected parliament.

The greens dish was very good; also the roasted potatoes (no pic)

The national dish: chili cheese (maybe a medium spicy jalapeno?). It's not bad...it's not good enough to be a national dish except the Bhutanese eat it a lot spicier than they serve to tourists and love it spicy!

Dessert (better than a cherry tomato in rice cake)

Our lunch includes pork dumplings and stir-fry chicken. All meals are included in the price of the tour except drinks (other than tea and coffee). $3 for hot lime and honey refreshers.

Off to the festival, this time Chencho drops us off. THB again plagiarizes Wikipedia to give you the short and more accurate version (except this festival lasts 5 days):

Festivals in the Land of the Thunder Dragon are rich and happy expressions of its ancient Buddhist culture. These festivals are held in all districts in honor of Guru Rinpoche, the saint who introduced Buddhism to Bhutan in the 8th century. Tsechus are held on auspicious days and months in the Bhutanese calendar, and last up to four days in which a series of highly stylized masked dance rituals are performed.

THB and DB start to feel the altitude, those stairs by the fortress (called a Dzong) seemed to be out of code as we’re struggling to climb up to the courtyard where the festival is taking place {Ed note: looking into the future, this probably explains the extra 45 minutes of driving tomorrow}.

Tashi demo'ing how to put on a sash; the sashes have significance as to the status of the wearer. Tashi is civil servant (of a sort), there are judges, police officers, postal workers, religious figures, etc.; Tashi gave us a long list...it's worse than explaining master points to non-bridge players

Not sure what the "gate" represents

There are four types of banners: for dead people, good luck, and two more that THB can't remember

The stage: a long dance is taking place, one of many dances spread over 5 days

Announcements are made from this side of the stage, and this is where the music emanates from: "shofar" like instruments, drums, singers

Viewing stand and where the dancers are emerging from

Masks are worn, similar to those we saw in the National Museum

The guys in red are clowns (with microphones)

The cheap seats...we stand the entire time we're there. All the Bhutanese come in traditional wear, very colorful and elaborate

Getting ready to come on stage

Playing cymbals

A dancer represents purgatory or being in limbo between heaven and hell

Clown action

A viewing stand behind where we are standing

The only stand inside the "gate"...KL, this one is for you!

There’s a dance in process and Tashi helps us to understand what is going on (think like you’re watching about an hour in movie 2 of a Star Wars trilogy and someone is trying to catch you up). The part THB understood is that one of the dancers entering the ring of other dancers represents purgatory (or the equivalent in the Bhutanese interpretation of Buddhism).

Okay, THB and DB are ready for a break and are dropped off at the hotel. Time to unpack. Sort of: we’ve kept our clothes separated into early and late in the trip as well as splitting up our individual stuff in two and carrying on one bag so if the luggage by the airline(s) is lost we still have plenty to get us through until the bag is found. Now THB is think he’ll just keep wearing the early clothes…so the only clothes he unpacks are the early clothes; the late clothes are in the other suitcase we haven’t dug into yet.

Is anything in this post making sense?????

Our room is lovely, just like the hotel. THB is blogging and DB is getting a massage.

Dinner at 6:30, Tashi joins us. Not much to say…dinner was okay, THB not too hungry and DB ordered off the “Western” menu, a nice looking piece of fish.